More and more people are expressing and demonstrating their interest in having computers understand them and provide personalized assistance tailored to their specific needs and context. Of course, to provide personalized assistance that is tailored to the specific needs and context of a person, the assisting process must be aware of many aspects of the person, i.e., his or her personal information. Indeed, the more aspects of the person a process knows, the better that process is in personalizing information for the person. A key question is, then: how to secure personal information and provide personalized assistance.